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2 Apr 2012

GILLES

I was looking through the archives and found another wonderful photo taken during the saturday afternoon practice for the 1981 Italian Grand Prix at Monza . Excuse the size but I wanted to show the detail .Taken by me on my Olympus OM2 with a 28mm lens on Kodachrome it shows Gilles Villeneuve just having climbed out of his Ferrari .Sadly Gilles was killed a few months later in an horrific accident during practice for the Belgium Grand Prix at Zolder . He was a real racer and a very gifted driver .On this particular day even his magic could not get him up higher than 9th on the grid and he retired early in the race on the next day .

Look at those great big, blistered doughnut slicks on the car and the wonderful relaxed scene with the small girl asking Gilles for his autograph .Today the pit Nazis would never have allowed the girl within cooee of the paddock entrance and his helmet and gloves would not have rested on the rear wing -a coiffured minder would have taken them from him( sponsors names towards cameras) before he climbed out of the car .Now it's all gone - except Ferrari and Monza and I am sure that Monza only still have a grand prix because of Ferrari otherwise Bernie would have given the Italian GP slot to Thailand or North Korea or some other unlikely place.All very sad --we have lost so much including Kodachrome. But at least we Australians have V8 Supercars and the Americans have NASCAR.The last sentence is irony .